Reversible Error

SEVENTEEN

"You're moping again," said Marlene at breakfast the next morning. "Why are you moping? God's in his heaven and Meissner's in jail. You have a sexy pregnant girlfriend, a good job, indoor work with no heavy lifting-what's to mope?"

"I'm not moping," said Karp, aggressively snapping the sports section of yesterday's Post.

"Yes, you are," Marlene insisted. "And how I know is, you positively rejected my patent sexual availability last night, conveyed by many a squirm and sigh, preferring to sink into sodden sleep."

Karp looked up from the paper. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Oh, not to worry," said Marlene. "I'll stop off and pick up some new batteries for the vibrator." She drank some coffee. No reaction from Karp. She continued, "But, really, I'm concerned. And I'm also starting to get mildly pissed. You can't keep dragging these black clouds into the house and expect me to cohabit around you like everything was just fine. It makes me think that maybe it's me, but I know I haven't done anything, and it drives me crazy. I'm not going to put up with it anymore."

"I'm sorry," said Karp again.

"Saying 'sorry' liked a whipped dog doesn't cut it either. Come on, Karp! This is good marriage practice. Share your inmost thoughts with your near and dear."

Karp shrugged and rubbed his knuckles over his mouth. "It's embarrassing," he began.

"What, you wet your pants before you go in front of a jury? Shit, everybody knows that. You're famous for it and nobody holds it against you."

Karp laughed out loud in spite of himself. "No, it's this fucking drug thing. I've been an asshole and I don't like it. I've been ignoring my instincts for months now and I've made a complete fuck-up of it."

"Welcome to the club," said Marlene. "Everybody blows one occasionally. So what's the story?"

"No, it's not just blowing a case. I just got myself involved in… sliminess. Politics. I didn't look where I should've looked because I didn't want to see. I wasn't on top of the investigation itself because I was playing games. I was playing games with Chief Denton. I was playing different games with Reedy and Fane. And then, of course, Roland started playing his own games. Why not? The fucking boss is doing it, right?"

And then he did tell her the whole story, from the conversation in his office with Clay Fulton about the drug-lord murders, to the scarifying interview with Bill Denton, to the revelations about Amalfi and Manning and Fane brought out by Tecumseh's confession and the further investigation by Clay. Reluctantly he also described his own involvement with Fane and Sergo and Reedy.

"And so there we have it," he concluded, "the whole investigation down the drain and me standing there like an idiot faked out of my jock. And there's Clay."

"Yeah, there's Clay," said Marlene, patting Karp's hand. "Do you think they, Manning, would actually kill him?"

"In a minute," said Karp. "All they need is Tecumseh's tape recording, and pow! pow! he's dead. Amalfi's gone, so the tape he made with Clay is pretty much useless, and the Tecumseh tape is all there is to connect Manning and Amalfi and Choo Willis to the killings. I'm on the tape and I can vouch for it, which makes it significant as evidence. So Manning has to have it.

"I don't even want to think about what the fucker is doing to Clay right now to get him to tell him where it is. If he gets it, and gets rid of Clay, we can't touch him. With the money they have, they can buy every snitch in Harlem. Oh, yeah, they can kick him off the force, but I doubt he's depending on his pension. Basically, we have no serious legal case. And, of course, Manning is the only connection we have with Fane, Sergo, and Reedy."

"I don't understand," said Marlene. "These stock guys all of a sudden decided to be dope dealers?"

"No, it probably went in stages. Fane owns the Club Mecca, where Choo Willis hangs out. So he had to know that Willis was a big-time dealer. Maybe they were even partners. Fane is in stocks with Reedy and later with Sergo. They're doing OK, but then Sergo comes up with this Agromont deal. Now they can get really rich.

"Maybe Fane approaches Willis with the idea about using drug money to buy stock. It's a perfect laundry when you add the off-shore bank. Drug money goes out-loans to buy stock come back in. The profits from these LBOs are so huge that the dirty money is swamped when the deals come off."

"But the Agromont deal didn't come off, you said," Marlene objected.

"Yes, that's what started this mess. They, the stock guys, were going to lose everything, including the cash they had got from Willis. They were running millions through their bank, but now they needed hundreds of millions."

"There's that much in dope?"

"In coke there is," said Karp. "And, of course, the more you buy, the better the deal from the suppliers and the bigger the profits. But the only way they could get as big as they had to get as fast as they needed to was to take over other big dealers. Which meant they had to have a foolproof way of knocking them out. That's where Manning and Amalfi came in. Manning was dirty already; he knew Willis. And the rest is history."

Marlene shook her head. "It still seems incredible. Guys like that…"

"I met Sergo," said Karp. "It's not that incredible."

"Are you positive Reedy's involved?" Marlene asked.

"I'm not positive about anything anymore," Karp replied grimly. "I'm pretty sure he's involved with the stock deals. He set up the offshore bank. He must have known what it was being used for. He's tight with Fane and Sergo. But whether he had actual guilty knowledge of the murders? That I can't say for sure."

"You sound like you'd be sorry if he was really deep in on it."

Karp nodded. "Yeah. I guess. I have to admit he got to me. That's really what makes me writhe inside. He read me like a book and got to me." He laughed. "I guess I'm queer for elderly Irish lawyers. Garrahy really meant something to me. I felt… I wanted that slot filled again, and he saw that and moved right in.

"And the chance to be D.A. That was the corker." He waved his hand to indicate the loft. "I mean, look at this! We're going to have a baby, for Chrissake! Is this a place for a kid? Five flights walking up and a floor full of splinters and God knows what kind of shit lying around. And you're going to have to stop work, at least for a little bit-"

"I'm not."

"OK, great, you're not. You're going to squat down in front of Part 30, say, 'Excuse me, your Honor,' pop the kid out, hand it to the stenographer, and continue the case. I wanted… I don't know, something more solid, a little comfort, a house maybe. Shit, Marlene, I'm thirty-three years old, and what do I own? Three suits, a first baseman's mitt, and a pair of sneakers."

"You have a rowing machine," said Marlene.

"Thank you! I rest my case. But you catch my drift. This can't go on. Running the bureau, dancing little circles around Bloom, waiting for a knife in the back. So when I saw a possible out… And now it's all shit, and Clay is fucked, and I don't know how to crawl out of it. So… am I moping? I'd like to change my plea on that. First-degree mopery. Yes, I'm moping. I have moped. And I plan to mope some more." The King Cole Trio sat in their dusty black van in the street outside the Club Mecca. This was a four-story building with apartments on the top two floors, offices on the next one down, and the nightclub itself occupying the rest. It had a gaudy tan stucco Moorish facade on its street side and a large green marquee that carried the club's name in neon letters shaped like Arabic script and an expanse of lettering that advertised the club's show.

The men did not talk as they worked, the only sound in the van being the snick-clunk of reloading weapons. The club had closed its doors to the public at three A.M., but the Trio knew that for a good number of its habitues this merely signaled the start of the evening.

The detectives left the van and marched abreast to the front door. All three carried Ithaca twelve-gauge pump guns. The door was covered by a steel gate pierced with fanciful Moorish designs and secured by a Yale lock. Maus knelt and brought out a ring of keys. "We don't need no stinkin warrant," he muttered, and after several tries found a passkey that worked.

They entered the darkened lobby of the club and walked softly down the carpeted hallway to where a strong light shone from under a door. The door, a cheap interior wood-core model, was locked. Jeffers backed up a few yards, braced, propelled himself into violent motion, and crashed through the barrier with no more apparent effort than an ordinary man would use to pass a beaded curtain.

The nightclub they entered had two levels: an upper horseshoe filled with tables, on which the three detectives now stood, and a lower level consisting of a deck of tables grouped around a large dance floor. Both faced a full stage decked with a heavy red-and-gold curtain. There were a dozen or so people on the lower level: showgirls, demiwhores, and a group of Choo Willis' hard boys. Five of the men were playing cards at one of the tables. The scene was brightly lit by the overhead cleaning lights.

Art Dugman went to the wrought-iron railing that rimmed the upper level and fired a round from his shotgun into the ceiling. Shrieks from the women, curses from the men. Plaster floated down on the card table and the men around it, dusting their clothes and the cards and piles of paper money on the table like light snow.

Dugman marched down to the lower level in silence. No one moved. All the players sat frozen like mannequins in a store window. They had all recognized the King Cole Trio, and no one wished to make any inadvertent twitch that might be construed as an attempt to extract a weapon.

As Dugman approached the card table, one of Choo Willis' lieutenants, a large shaven-headed man known as Buster, spoke up. "What the fuck is this, Dugman? Ain't you got no other shit to do?"

In one swift movement Dugman pumped a shell into the chamber of his shotgun and placed its muzzle against Buster's upper lip. "Are you addressing me?" asked Dugman mildly. "I don't believe I solicited a comment." He continued to push on the shotgun. Buster's head arched backward. His chair tipped. Dugman kept the man artfully balanced with just the pressure of the shotgun's muzzle on the man's lip. A thin trickle of blood and saliva started down Buster's chin.

"I'm looking for Choo-choo," Dugman said. "Where is he?"

Buster's eyes bulged and he mumbled something.

Dugman cocked his head. "What's that, Buster? I can't make out what you said."

The muzzle of the shotgun, greased by Buster's copious sweat, had worked its way up until it was now lodged under the man's cheekbone.

"He ain't here. I swear to Jesus, he ain't here."

"Where is he, then?"

"I dunno. He din tell me nothin."

"Was he here tonight?"

"Yeah, early. He was in his office, upstairs. Then he call an say he going out and won be back. An he lef. Hey, man, my face hurt."

Dugman ignored this comment. He asked, "He see anybody?"

"The fuck I know, man? He in there with the door locked. He call down for some drinks and food bout eleven. Thas all I know, man."

Dugman looked at Buster and saw that he was not lying. Gently he shoved on the shotgun and Buster went over with a crash. Dugman swept the barrel of the shotgun across the table, knocking glasses and ashtrays to the floor, and then gathered up the tablecloth as a sack, with the money and the cards inside.

"Thank all you gentlemen. And ladies. And thanks for having your contributions to the Police Athletic League ready on the table when I arrived. That is most considerate."

He walked back up the stairs to the second level and, leaving the crowd to sit under the guns of Maus and Jeffers, went to check out the office of Choo Willis. Clay Fulton was tied into a heavy chair with electrical wire. He was in darkness, blindfolded, in a small room. Although he could see nothing, he could still smell, even though they had broken his nose. He could smell damp, and salt, and his own filth. He thought, from the smell and the sounds, that he was near water, the sea, or the tidal rivers. He was naked and cold. He heard a door open, a scrape, and then someone emptied a bucket of cold stinking water over his head.

He gasped involuntarily. Another scrape of furniture. They were arranging themselves. Someone-he thought it was Manning-said, "Where's the tape, Fulton?"

He didn't answer. He figured he could hold out another twelve hours. Counting one lie. He could buy maybe two, three hours with a lie. Then there would be nothing left. If somebody didn't find him before then, they would have drained everything out of him. There would be nobody home to resist. He would tell them and they would get the tape and they would kill him. He wished the lie he had told about lots of copies was true. In fact there was only one tape. He wished he could see his wife.

He felt the cold pinch as they attached the electrodes. Manning had been in Nam, he recalled. He had learned what there was to learn about making people hurt. They were going to send him a message again, as the saying went. They cranked the generator. Fulton heard himself scream, but as from a long distance away. "There was nothing in the office at all?" Karp asked.

"Nothing," said Dugman. "And nothing in Manning's apartment, or Willis' place either." Dugman had been up all the previous night, breaking and entering in a good cause, and he was tired and red-eyed. They were in Karp's office late the next day, and Clay Fulton had been missing for over forty-eight hours.

"You tried everyplace? Willis' associates, Manning's-"

"We didn't hit Fane," said Dugman.

"No, he's not anywhere near Fane," said Karp, instinctively sure of it. He felt as bad as Dugman looked, oppressed with the futility of going forward with what in any case had been a thin hope. Three cops could not expect to find someone hidden in one of the hundreds of thousands of buildings in the city. And Fulton might have been taken out of town.

"We gonna have to open this up, my friend. Splash it all around the world," said Dugman.

"I guess," said Karp listlessly. He toyed with a pencil. "Just… You said that Willis was in his office last night. And he was alone. He must have made some calls. Would it be possible to-?

"No, wait a sec, there," said Dugman. "I didn't say nothing about him being alone. He had at least two people in there. What I said was nobody saw him with anybody. But there was two people in there."

"How do you know that?"

"The food cart," said Dugman, yawning and rubbing his rubbery face. "They cleaned up after serving, and it was a service for three. Two beer glasses. A soda. Look like some kind of cocktail. Three plates-crumbs and chicken bones. And three coffee cups. No, two coffee. One had tea."

"Nothing else? Nothing written on the napkins?"

Dugman gave him a deadpan stare. "You been watchin too much TV, my man. No writing on the napkins, no poison darts, no match-books with the name of the place he at. None of that shit. Two glasses, two beer bottles, one soda glass, one soda can, three plates, three napkins, knives, forks, spoons, cream and sugar, and a coffeepot. That's all."

The detective rose to his feet and stretched. "I got to go get the real search going. Maybe we'll check, see if we can trace any of the calls they made-that's a good idea, anyway."

"No teapot?" Karp asked abruptly. He desperately did not want Dugman to leave, to start a chain of actions that would make the entire miserable affair public and out of control.

Dugman snorted. "Huh! You persistent, I give you that. No, matter of fact, there wasn't no teapot." He thought for a moment. "No tea bag neither."

"Then why did you say one of them had tea?" "Because of the lemon. There was a squeezed lemon on the saucer of one of the cups. Nobody drinks their coffee with lemon, do they?" Karp felt a flood of excitement and satisfaction wash through him, a feeling a lightness and release. He reflected that it was exactly like that feeling he used to get when he launched a three-point shot from twenty-five feet out and knew deep in his body, in a way that defied the telling, that it was going to float into the basket without touching the rim.

He said, "No, not many people do," in such a strange tone of voice that Dugman stopped and stared at him. Then he said, "Art, did you ever just know something? Like about a crime. When you all of a sudden knew who did it, or how he did it?"

Dugman said, "You mean like a hunch?"

"Yeah," said Karp, "but more than that. Like a certainty. I know where they have Fulton." "This is a fucking fort," said Maus. "How the hell are we gonna get in?" The King Cole Trio were standing outside their van in the trash-strewn shadows of the West Side Highway looking across Eleventh Avenue at the immense front of Pier 87, the old American Line property. The main entrance, through which trucks and cars had once unloaded and provisioned transatlantic liners, was sealed with corrugated steel. There were several smaller doors on either side of the main entrance, and these were barred with heavy steel grids.

"Well?" Maus spoke again irritably. "How are we?"

Art Dugman looked up from the building plans he was studying. He had reading glasses on, which made him look disconcertingly professorial. "When I figure it, you be the first to know," he said. He resumed his study. The plans showed that the building had three working floors. The ground floor was essentially a huge open bay, largely devoted to vehicular traffic and the reception and handling of baggage and cargo. The rear of this area had been assigned to customs. The second floor was a reception area for passengers; first class, second class, third class all had their separate entranceways, lounges, bars. The top floor was offices.

That was the plan. What the interior of the building looked like now, fifteen years after the last liner had docked, was anyone's guess. If this had been a normal police operation, Dugman would have covered all the doors and sent a squad down through the roof, clearing the building from above, by the book. Going into a monster like this was an impossible task for three men, especially on no better information than Karp's hunch. Dugman folded the plans neatly and climbed back into the van. He looked into the ice chest and found a soda and half a roast-beef sandwich that Maus had bought the previous day.

He drank some soda against the oppressive heat and took a bite of the sandwich. It was dry and gristly. He thought of searching for one of the plastic sacks of catsup or mayo that were usually to be found scattered on the floor of the van, but decided not to bother. He put the rest of the sandwich into his coat pocket and closed his burning eyes.

Jeffers was stretched out full length on the carpet covering the rear, a Post draped over his face. Gentle snores came from beneath the paper, fluttering it. Dugman turned around and looked at him with irritation. He said in an unnecessarily loud voice, "Hey, Jeffers! You on the job? You protecting the public?"

Jeffers grunted and said sleepily, "I'm thinkin about it. I'm getting my courage up to face them miserable mean streets once again. Anything goin on?"

"Yeah, we sittin with our knittin out on the street. I can't think of a way to get into that damn pier without a fuckin strike team."

"We could just go up to the door and say, 'Open up! This the po-lice.' It work for me."

"Yeah, and they'll cut the Loo's throat between the po and the -lice."

"So what're we doing here?"

"We waiting, son," said Dugman. "Either for a inspiration from the Lord or for that radio to light up and tell us that they found the Loo. Or for something. We might as well wait here as anywhere."

"Fine with me," answered Jeffers, readjusting the paper over his face. "Wake me up if something happen."

The sun moved across Manhattan and began its slow descent toward its home in New Jersey. The front of the pier was thrown into ocher shadow. Dugman sat in the passenger seat of the van listening to the irrelevant crackle of the police radio, dozing fitfully. Maus lurked behind a highway pillar watching the pier building, whistling "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." In the back of the van Jeffers snored more deeply.

Dugman was just thinking about walking down 47th Street to hustle a takeout dinner when he heard the sound of quick footsteps.

"Hey!" said Maus when he reached the van. "There's somebody coming out of the pier."

Dugman slipped out of the van and went to look. One of the small doors on the side of the pier had opened and a slender black man had emerged from its shadows. He locked the door from the outside, walked toward a black late-model Chevrolet parked in front of the pier, opened its door, and started the engine.

He stood outside for a minute, allowing the air conditioning to blow the day's heat out of the interior, then entered the car and drove off.

"Let's go get him," Dugman snapped, dashing around to the passenger side.

Maus jumped into the driver's seat, gunned the van's engine, and took off south on Twelfth Avenue. He kept the van half a block behind the Chevy for several streets. There were no other cars moving on the avenue, which was lined on both sides with idle semi-trailers.

Maus moved the van up to within two car lengths of the Chevy, then trod heavily on the gas. The van leapt forward, ran up alongside the car, and swerved in front of it. Dugman had a glimpse of the driver's panicked face before the van drove the Chevy into the side of a parked semi with a screech of metal and brakes.

It was a perfect pinch. The rear of the van pinned the driver's door shut and the other door was crushed against the side of the trailer. The driver was trapped. Dugman got out and stood in front of the Chevy with his arms crossed, wreathed by escaping steam from the car's broken radiator. Jeffers grabbed his shotgun and went around to the rear of the trapped car. When he was in position, he whistled, and Maus rolled the van ahead enough to free the driver's door.

Jeffers popped it open and yanked the shaken man out. He spun him around, placed the muzzle of the twelve-gauge against the base of his skull, braced him against his own car, hands on the hood, and patted him down one-handed, coming up with a 9mm automatic pistol and a four-inch butterfly knife. He pulled the man's hands behind him and snapped on handcuffs.

Dugman approached and looked the man in the face. He was a young man, not more than twenty, and Dugman did not recognize him-one more of the street's unlimited supply of apprentices to the drug trade.

"You got a license for this gun, son?" Dugman asked politely, holding up the weapon.

"Fuck you, asshole!" the kid yelled. "I din do shit, an you fucked up my car. Who gonna pay for it, nigger?"

Jeffers said, "He must not be local, talkin' like that."

Dugman shoved the pistol into his belt and nodded. "I don't guess. Where you from, son? Brooklyn?"

"What the fuck you care? You gonna bust me, go ahead!"

"Take him around behind the trailer," said Dugman.

Jeffers grabbed the kid's arm and started to lead him away. The kid did not expect this. He looked around wildly, took a deep breath, and started to shout, "Hey! Help! Police brutality! Hey!" It was the kind of thing that often worked to advantage on the crowded streets of Bed-Stuy.

Not pausing in his stride, Jeffers tossed up his shotgun, grabbed it five inches from the end of the barrel, and jammed its front end neatly into the kid's open mouth. He jammed it upward until most of the kid's weight was hanging from his soft palate. A high whistle of agony came from the kid's throat.

Behind the trailer, Jeffers kicked the kid's feet out from under him and threw him facedown on the pavement. Then he sat down heavily on the kid's back.

Dugman squatted on his haunches near the kid's face. He said in a conversational tone, "Now, you ain't from around here, so we got to make some allowances. Up in Harlem we let a lot of shit go by, but one thing we don't let go by is snatching no New York City Police Department detective lieutenants. You think you been in trouble before. You been to Youth Hall. You maybe been to Rikers a time or two. But now you're in Harlem trouble, son. It's another world. What we got here is way, way beyond police brutality. Am I getting through to you?"

"Breathe…" the kid gasped.

Dugman motioned to Jeffers, who leaned forward and took some of his weight onto his feet. Air sucked into the kid's lungs in a rush. A trickle of blood leaked from his mouth and spotted the pavement.

"Now," Dugman continued, "you could be a big help to us. We need to know exactly where they got the lieutenant, and where Manning is, and how many guys are in there, and where they are. And the layout inside. Can you do that?"

The kid gasped, "Fuck you, cop!"

"We don't have time for this shit," said Dugman. He leaned forward until his face was only a few inches from the kid's staring eye. "You ever eat your own flesh, kid?" he asked softly.

The eye just stared. The kid had no ready answer.

Dugman said to Jeffers, "Cut off his ear!"

Jeffers took out the butterfly knife, snapped it open, grabbed the kid's right ear roughly and began to saw away. Blood rolled down the kid's face into his eye. The kid howled and heaved, but Jeffers might have been the Chrysler Building for all it mattered.

Dugman leaned over and pinched the kid's nostrils shut, and when his mouth popped open he shoved a bloody mass into the kid's mouth. The kid immediately spit it out, gagging and retching. He was sobbing now, and his nose was running.

"He doesn't like ear," said Dugman. "Too bad."

"Want to try some nose?" suggested Jeffers.

"Nobody like nose," said Dugman. "Besides, his all running with snot. It's disgusting. No, whyn't you roll him over. Everybody like pecker."

They left the kid, crying and cursing, manacled to the bumper of his car, and drove back to the pier. After a block or so, Dugman remarked to Jeffers, "You were real sloppy cutting off that ear. I tell you to cut off some mutt's ear, I expect it to fly off his head."

Maus said, "Oh, right! I got to drive, and you guys get all the fun part. How come I never get to torture suspects? This sucks, guys, I mean it. I'm sorry I joined the cops now."

Jeffers ignored this and said to Dugman, "Sorry about that, boss, I guess I didn't get enough sleep."

"You was using the wrong side of the blade, fool! You suppose to use the sharp side, cut off a man's ear."

"No kidding?" said Jeffers, opening his eyes wide. "Shit, I better write that down. And while we at it, what did you shove in that kid's mouth?"

"Piece of Maus's roast beef. I slopped it in some of his blood."

"You fed him Maus's roast-beef sandwich!" Jeffers exclaimed. "Hey, Sarge, I got to tell you that's over the line. I might have to write you up for that. No wonder he puked."

Maus said, "When you guys stop fuckin around, you want to tell me what he said?"

Dugman said, "Yeah, he was real cooperative after we unzipped his fly. There's five guys in the place besides him. Willis, Manning, and three others. One guy's at the entrance, sits in a little guard office by the door. The rest of them are on the second floor. Water and power's cut off. They use electric lanterns. They got the Loo in a storage closet on the second floor."

"Is he OK?" asked Maus.

"He still screaming, the kid said. The kid said he was going to get some tape that the Loo had. That's why they were beatin on him. He finally broke down and told them where it was. I figure they won't do him before they got the tape in hand; he could just be buying time. So he's still alive, but he ain't gonna stay alive unless we do this right."

Maus parked the van under the expressway and Dugman told the other two men what he expected them to do. He racked a round into the chamber of the Spanish 9mm he had taken off the kid and checked his own big.357 revolver. Maus and Jeffers also checked their 9mm automatics, huge weapons that sat uncomfortably heavy in their shoulder holsters, and Maus picked up his shotgun and a roll of gaffer's tape.

They walked across the deserted avenue to the pier. It was twilight, but the concrete still held the day's heat. As they walked, they each glanced up nervously at the windows of the building, now in deep shadow, like the embrasures of a fortress.

Dugman opened the door with the key he had taken off the kid. They slipped silently into echoing moist darkness, dappled with shafts of light from glassless openings on the river side of the structure. A paler light also came from a small guard post built out of the right inside wall of the building.

As they approached, a voice called out, "Hey, Sloopy, you back already?"

Jeffers accelerated like the linebacker he once was, smashed through the flimsy wooden door of the office, and smashed the man to the ground with a blow of his pistol. The man collapsed and was quickly trussed and gagged with gaffer's tape.

Dugman and Jeffers started up the enclosed concrete main stairway. Maus ran across to the other side of the loading bay to a doorway, went through, and started climbing the outside fire stairs.

At the second-floor landing Dugman opened the door a crack and peered through.

"You see anything?" Jeffers asked in a whisper.

"Yeah," whispered Dugman. Through the crack he could see most of a large and partially ruined room, a passenger lounge of some kind, with a long bar along one wall with a large cracked mirror behind it. Part of the ceiling had sagged, exposing pipes and beams, and the pastel murals depicting luxury ocean travel were buckled and stained. A few pieces of broken furniture lay scattered around and there was a pile of the padded cloths movers use abandoned against one wall.

"Two guys sitting at a table," he said. "A guy lying on a couch. I don't see Willis or Manning."

"What do we do?" said Jeffers.

"I'll go right, you go left. Watch the-"

There was a distant sharp report. And another. Then two louder explosions. Dugman saw the two men at the table spring to their feet and draw pistols from their clothes. The man on the couch sat up, shook his head, reached down to the floor, and came up with a MAC-10 machine pistol. A door slammed some where and someone shouted, "What the fuck…!"

The men looked away at the source of the shots, and Dugman sprang into the room with his revolver in both hands. Without warning, he began firing into the man with the MAC-10. Hit three times, the man fell back on the couch, and as he fell his hand tightened convulsively on the trigger of the little automatic weapon, spraying fire at his two companions. One of them was struck by the full force of the burst and went down screaming.

The other one got off a shot at Dugman, which pierced his suit coat. He felt the tug of the cloth and thought briefly that he had been hit. He was swinging his gun around to the new target when he heard the rapid fire of Jeffers' pistol from somewhere behind him and the third man cried out and disappeared behind the table.

Dugman rose creakily from the crouch he had assumed and snapped a Speed-loader into his revolver. They heard running footsteps and the slam of a door. Jeffers started to move in the direction of the sounds, but Dugman placed a restraining hand on his arm.

"No," he said, "drop on down to the entrance. There ain't but one way out, unless he's got a boat. Maus has the top covered."

"What about Willis?"

"He'll keep. Just go. I got to find the Loo."

Jeffers ran off down the stairs. When he was gone, Dugman glanced briefly at the three men they had shot, enough to make sure all of them were dead. One was still rasping out breath, but Dugman saw that his belly and chest had been blown apart by the automatic fire at close range. He stepped over the man and walked toward the storeroom where the kid had said Fulton was being held. A smell like that of an ill-kept monkey house reached his nose before he had the door open. His stomach turned over as he stepped into blackness.